MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

9/26 Hoyer: “We have to get better”

At this point in the season, Cubs GM Jed Hoyer would prefer to be sweating over last-minute postseason travel plans than scheduling meetings to evaluate the roster and coaching staff.

“When you’re not in the playoffs — you hate when you’re not — but when you’re not in the playoffs it’s a really good planning time,” Hoyer said.

For example, Josh Vitters started at third Wednesday. He’s one of the many prospects being looked at for next season. The results so far have been mixed.

“Some have shown a lot and some have done enough to not earn a position with the team but strong consideration for the winter,” Hoyer said. “Some have indicated they need more seasoning and starting next year [at Triple-A Iowa] would be the best. It is a mixed bag. Every guy who’s come up hasn’t shown we need to reserve a spot for him next season but that’s to be expected. We need to get better next year and having depth at Triple-A is important. A lot of those guys may feel they’re ready but if they start the year at Iowa, that’s probably a positive for our roster.”

Hoyer knows first-hand that some players take a little longer. He promoted Anthony Rizzo to the big leagues last season with the Padres, and watched the first baseman struggle to hit .141.

“That first time in the big leagues, I think it’s really difficult to evaluate,” Hoyer said. “I’ve had a number of players tell me the butterflies don’t go away that first time up, they’re nervous all the time, they have a hard time calming themselves down. Maybe the second time, the third time they come up, it’s like, ‘OK, I belong here.’ It’s hard to evaluate a guy when he’s nervous. It’s hard to blame them sometimes. This is their dream, they’re up for the first time, the game is faster. Sometimes those things can snowball. It did with Rizzo last year.”

The Cubs do have a significant amount of money coming off the books and it could be a busy offseason.

“We will have financial flexibility,” Hoyer said. “We’ve been diligent to make sure we do have flexibility and we’re efficient going forward. We’ll obviously be active in the free agent market. That’s a big part of our research and work now is evaluating free agents. We have some money to spend and we’ll focus on it heavily.”

Hoyer isn’t looking at the Cubs record this year.

“People in every walk of life focus on round numbers,” Hoyer said. “One hundred losses is a round number. I’m not going to feel any better about a 96-loss season or a 98-loss season or a 100-loss season. In any way, shape or form, we have to get better. I don’t want to lose 100 games either. That’s something people talk about and it’s a round number we clearly want to avoid. If we avoid it, it doesn’t mean I’ll feel better about our season. We have to get better. That’s the focus.”

– Carrie Muskat

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10 Comments

It sounds like Hoyer is saying the right things. Next season will be so much more meaningful when judging Hoyer and Epstein because we will see HOW they spend MONEY not just how they draft or trade. Just imagine their flexibility when they are no longer forced to pay the millions of round numbers to Soriano!!

whats pretty cool is outside of castro and soler(other cubans) we have practically no contracts after the 2014 season…. pretty crazy… thats a clean slate! No reason we shouldn’t be in the bidding for Greinke, Upton, Cabera, other SP this offseason…. it NEEDS to be an active offseason… lets shoot for 78 wins next year with more payroll flexibility to have another great offseason in 2013… should be/could be very competitive 2014 and beyond

If we’re not in the bidding for some SP this off-season, then this off-season will have been wasted. We could “get by” with what we have almost everywhere else, but not with our SP. We must get some new blood in the rotation!

If Hoystein slots Samardijza or Garza as a number 1 or 2 pitcher for next season we are in trouble. Those two should be 3 & 4 with two BETTER pitchers ADDED to the rotation in order to be taken seriously and have a reason to sign a third baseman and centerfielder. Without two pitchers better than Samardijza and Garza we might as well wait until 2014 to sign impact free agents.

That the exact opposite of what he said. He said people (fans, media) will focus on the round # (100) as being the measuring stick for a bad season but he realizes that whether the lose 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101 etc it’s a bad season. Avoiding 100 losses wouldn’t make it be less bad.

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